As summer wanes and autumn sets upon us, it seems the perfect time to get in some folk horror before we feast our eyes upon the darker, supernatural fare that we tend to embrace during the Halloween season. And I found just the film at Fantastic Fest this year. Dean Puckett’s The Severed Sun is a modern folk horror tale that is full of metaphor and meaning, as well as unsettling imagery and a measure of brutality. It incorporates religion, toxic masculinity, female power, and a strange creature lurking in the woods.
The film wastes no time and opens strong with a woman killing her abusive husband. This woman is Magpie (Jodhi May). When we join her story, she has had enough. She isn’t coming to a realization, or making a plan. She is DONE. She refuses to live with his abuse toward her and her children any longer, and she does the only thing that she can - she takes him out. And as shocking as those opening moments are, we are immediately on her side when she mumbles about how he deserves worse, as she is positioning the body in a way that won’t fully betray the cause of death.
Magpie lives as a part of a small religious community in rural England. They live under the ironclad rule of God, which is administered harshly by their leader (Toby Stephens), who also happens to be Magpie’s father. After the “accidental” death of her husband, some of the townsfolk turn on Magpie. They disapprove of her reaction to her husband’s death, to the way she seems to be pulling away from their faith and conducting herself in a more independent manner. Rumors begin circulating about her behavior. The townsfolk begin to whisper among themselves that she is in league with an evil beast that lurks deep in the forest.
Dean Puckett crafted a strong script with zero fat. We jump right into the story and it keeps going for the entirety of its 80 minute runtime. No moments are wasted. The dialogue and story beats give us everything that we need to know about this community and the individual characters and every moment pushes the story forward. The themes of female independence and action create interesting conflict among the characters, as they decide where in the proceedings they will fall. Some immediately jump to blaming Magpie, while others, having had their own troubles with men in the community, are more hesitant.
This film is particularly elegant with its ideas and its theming. The danger in Puckett’s story is coming from two different fronts. On one side, we have the people of the community. Fearful and judgemental, they immediately scorn and scapegoat anything that flies in the face of their beliefs. Magpie, with her fierce opinions and her anger at how she has been treated, is an easy target to blame when things start to awry. To them, she has turned her back on God and has allowed her pride and arrogance to lead her away from her rightful place.
The other point of danger comes from the supernatural element of the thing that is haunting the woods outside of the village. What is its plan? Does it have specific desires? Is it specifically tied to Magpie, or is she simply another casualty of its intentions? It lurks around the edges of our story, for the most part, but makes its presence known from time to time in a very big way.
Puckett spins an effective tale of religion and otherworldly mystery with his feature debut. He does a lot with a limited budget, and nothing is wasted here. Every moment is well used and goes toward building a story that is deeply unsettling, while also being very thought-provoking. The Severed Sun is a folk horror film that intertwines horror and conflict in a way that keeps audiences engaged and also creates a scenario where Good and Evil lie in gray spaces.
Movie Score: 4/5
Emily von Seele hails from Seattle, where it rains a lot, which gives her plenty of excuses to stay inside and watch movies. She has written for Bloody Disgusting, Daily Dead, the Women in Horror Annual and Grim Magazine, and is co-host of the Dead Ringers podcast. You can usually catch Emily on Twitter (@horrorellablog), where she has been known to gab excessively about movies and tweet adorable pics of her two cats - seriously, they are the cutest ever.
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